Call for paper
"Tolkien's Poetry"
Note: You are viewing an obsolete page. For up-to-date information on this book, please visit www.walking-tree.org/books/tolkiens_poetry.php.
Fortunately for the field of Tolkien studies, the quality and quantity of academic monographs and papers on Tolkien have noticeably intensified over the last decade. However, next to other aspects of Tolkien's work that deserve more attention, one aspect that is of central importance for our understanding of Tolkien as author and literary mythmaker has only marginally been the subject of scholarly interest: Tolkien's poetry.
Although the few published essays on the topic have provided us with important insights into some of Tolkien's verse, we lack a broad study of Tolkien's poetry that can give us a far-reaching understanding of this author, who wrote more than a hundred poems, many of them specifically as cultural artefacts to add depth to his narrative works.
This barely covered topic thus offers excellent opportunities for academic exploration of the many different poems and songs that are included in Tolkien's narrative works (The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings), or that have been published separately or in another context (The Adventures of Tom Bombadil). Furthermore Tolkien's poetic versions of some of the tales of his legendarium deserve a closer look to assess his qualities as a narrative poet (The Lay of Leithian, The Lay of the Children of Húrin).
This book, edited by Julian Eilmann and Allan Turner, intends to bring together Tolkien scholars who are interested in exploring the fascinating topic of Tolkien's poetry and thus establish the basis for future studies to build upon.
The book will be published at the beginning of 2012 by Walking Tree Publishers. Authors are invited to contribute on topics of their choice. Possible research areas could be:
Tolkien and his anchorage in the lyrical tradition (e. g. English poetry of the 19th century)
An in-depth analysis of a single or a group of Tolkien poems in view of a leading aspect (e. g. speaker, recurrent/special lyrical motives, the function of the poem(s) in a narrative text like LotR, Hobbit etc.)
From poetry to 'prose with chunks of poetry in between': Tolkien's development as poet and narrator
Tolkien's 'book of poetry: The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
Poetic 'narratives': The Lay of Leithian, The Lay of the Children of Húrin and the influence of medieval and medievalising poetry in Tolkien's work
"Creative Imagination": Tolkien's poetry in context of his concept of sub-creation
Lyrical lore: Poems and their multiple communicative functions in Middle-earth's oral culture
Please send an abstract with a brief bio/bibliography by January 15th 2011 to julianeilmann[at]web.de or Julian Eilmann, Lochnerstr. 28, 52064 Aachen, Germany.
Walking Tree Publishers – www.walking-tree.org
Artwork: Anke Eissmann – www.anke.edoras-art.de
Download call for papers (pdf)
